Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!evan
From: evan@telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Ashton Tate's on the net! (was Re: Free Text in a Database)
Message-ID: <488@telly.UUCP>
Date: 27 Jan 89 04:48:24 GMT
References: <1509@murdu.OZ> <1@dbase.UUCP>
Organization: System telly, Brampton, Ontario
Lines: 42

In article <1@dbase.UUCP> awd@dbase.UUCP (Alastair Dallas) writes:
>
>Not to be overtly commercial, but why not try dBASE IV?  It is known to
>be friendly to "computer illiterates," it has good variable-length text
>support (in 'memo' fields) and it includes a word processor.  I think
>whoever sold you Framework missed a trick.
>
>/alastair/

Welcome, Alastair! Nice to see Ashton Tate represented here, considering
that _someone_ has to stand up for them here :-).

I'm sorry, but unless dBASE IV has better support for memo fields than
I recall, (ie, ability to search on a string found in a memo field, the
ability to call up the word processor of one's choice to edit it, etc),
that won't fit the bill for many free-text systems.

Now that THAT'S out of the way...

Let me be the first one on the net (there may be many) to express
to you my feelings on Ashton Tate's legal assault on Fox Software. I
beileve this action is nothing less than odious, and tells the world
that dBASE can't beat Fox with a superior product, so they're trying
to beat Fox in court. Doesn't speak much for the company's faith that
dBASE IV can knock Fox out of the market on technical merits alone.

At this time, I and many applications developers I know have begun an
informal, unorganized boycott of Ashton Tate products, because money spent
on lawyers is not spent on R&D. The legal argument of owning a computer
language, even if the company wins, is morally bankrupt. The end result,
win or lose, will be the castration of the dBASE aftermarket your company
sought to built in better days.

I urge you to pass the message on to those making the decisions that
this move hurts the users of your products more than it hurts Fox or
anyone else. I believe and hope that the users will return the favour
until Ashton Tate gets out of the courtroom and back to the lab.
-- 
_____________________________________________________________________
Evan Leibovitch, System Telly, located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
         evan@telly.on.ca / {uunet!attcan,utzoo}!telly!evan
  And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."